Sides lining up in FERC nomination fight

It’s not unusual for think tanks, lobbyists, PR firms and deep-pocketed foundations to draw battle lines when the president nominates a new agency head — unless the agency is an obscure regulatory body with an ungainly nickname like “FERC.”

But Ron Binz’s nomination to chair the five-person Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is already breaking new ground as it becomes caught up in a larger struggle over the Obama administration’s policies on climate change, fossil fuels and Wall Street wrongdoing.

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So far the drama has included a Wall Street Journal editorial that denounced the former Colorado utility regulatory as “radical” for his past attempts to shut down coal plants, a stern rebuttal from a dozen former Republican and Democratic FERC commissioners, and a green energy nonprofit’s eyebrow-raising decision to hire a public relations firm to support Binz’s confirmation. His case has also drawn the interest of a libertarian-leaning energy group that has gotten some of its past money from the billionaire Koch brothers, as well as lobbying powerhouses like the group that represents the nation’s electric cooperatives.

Most lawmakers have yet to take a public stand on Binz. Still, the hiring of the Washington-based PR firm VennSquared Communications by his supporters was signal enough that this won’t be a typical FERC confirmation process.

“These things don’t happen in the FERC world,” one utility industry lobbyist said. “For a nominee, who cares? It’s a big commission. There are five votes. It’s just usually not worth people’s effort.”

But if conservative groups that object to Binz’s record have their way, everyone will be hearing a lot more about FERC.

“People in Washington don’t even know what FERC is, let alone people outside of Washington,” said Ben Cole, a spokesman for the libertarian-leaning American Energy Alliance, which has criticized Binz but not yet outright opposed his confirmation. “But my suspicion is, they’re about to learn about an agency they didn’t know existed.”

Cole added: “My other suspicion was that the administration had hoped that a FERC nomination would be snooze-fest on Capitol Hill, as they have been many times in the past. But that’s not going to be the case this time.”

The Green Tech Action Fund, a renewable energy nonprofit affiliated with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation, wouldn’t say exactly what prompted it to hire VennSquared. But Richard Caperton, managing director of energy programs at the liberal Center for American Progress, said he thinks it “reflects a change in the times and a change in how Washington works.”

“Now that every nomination has become highly politicized and partisan, it makes sense to bring in outside help to move nominations forward,” he said. “I definitely expect that we’ll see more of it. I’m sort of surprised we haven’t seen more of it already.”

The agency oversees the electric grid, interstate natural gas pipelines and litany of other issues central to the nation’s energy consumption. In recent years, it has also made headlines for outgoing Chairman Jon Wellinghoff’s attempts to make it easier to hook wind and solar projects to the grid, as well as the fines it has imposed on Wall Street firms like JPMorgan Chase for alleged manipulation of energy markets.

But Binz’s background offers opportunities for theatrics that were missing from some of President Barack Obama’s other energy-related picks, such as Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

In March, Binz told the audience at an Edison Foundation event that natural gas will be a “dead end” by 2035 without technology to capture its greenhouse gas emissions. (Never mind that Moniz, who’s certainly no anti-gas zealot, has made similar remarks with no fanfare.) Before that, as chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, Binz became wildly unpopular with the coal industry after he helped craft a state law that offered incentives for closing some coal-burning power plants.

Binz also was subject of a state ethics complaint filed by a Republican state legislator, leading to a ruling that he had violated rules but “did not breach the public trust for personal gain” by accepting a travel reimbursement from an energy analysis firm. An embarrassing audit of travel by Colorado’s utility commissioners provided more ammunition for his critics.

Some of his opponents say Binz has crossed the line from regulator to executive branch advocate, citing a website in which he boasted of his role in “implementing the many policy changes championed by the Governor and the Legislature to bring forward Colorado’s ‘New Energy Economy.’”